Volkswagen group

1. Describe and classify the Segway Personal Transporter using terms from chapter 10.

Segway is a specialty goods type of consumer goods. Because of the price, it won’t fit in to the convenience goods and shopping goods. The place that sells Segway are somewhat limited due to the fact the product are only being sold in major cities. The purchase behavior of the customer are highly unlikely to be frequent and consumers need to do a lot of research and consideration time before purchasing. For degree of tangibility, Segway is a durable good, the product are expected to last for years, and salesperson is really important to help the purchase decision of the consumers.

The distinct differences that separate Segway from the traditional transportation tools make the product a discontinuous innovation. A good amount of learning and precaution is needed for first time users. 2. What are the marketing implications for Segway considering the fact that the Segway transporter is still in the introduction stage? The product is not being well known, and sales are low, but still growing.

The product price is high because the company need to take back the money they spent on invention. Though the price is high, the profit is low because large amount of money goes to promotion. The Segway should be concerned about the amount of promotion, the idea of the product is new, if consumer don’t know the product exist, the sale will be low. Segway also need to beware of the competitors, setting a higher price can result in more competitors due to the potential of the market.

Should Segway open their own mall stores by renting space in regional shopping centers all across North America to demo and sell PTs. Segway shouldn’t open mall stores because the product is still in the introduction stage, the success or fail is still undetermined right now. Putting money in to open stores would result in a huge financial lose if the product doesn’t sell well. However, opening stores and setup demos would promote the product, and give consumer a chance to try the product before they buy, the sales are expected to be higher.

3. Volkswagen has approached Segway and has asked them to build a model using their VW brand that would be exclusive to their North American dealerships. Volkswagen would buy the PTs and resell them in each ealership as VW PTs.

This would be a disadvantage for consumers, if Segway build a new model of PTs and then sell the PTs to VW, the price are likely to be higher. The VW want to make profit after all, they will add certain amount of profit on top of how much they bought from Segway. The Segway can gain advantage of this partnership, since VW is doing the promotion and has salesperson to sell the product. For VW, it can be advantage or disadvantage, because the product is still in introductory stage, so it is uncertain how well the product will sale.